Dev BPO Facebook

Rural outsourcing refers to a method in which jobs are transferred
away from higher cost urban areas to lower cost rural areas. With
increased level of salaries to the employees, real estate prices, and
high attrition rates has escalated costs incurred by the BPO industry.

Benefits of Rural outsourcing:

Lower cost of operations

Producing loyal and efficient employee base

Lower operating costs

Absence of communicational or cultural barriers

Lower attrition rates

Proximity to the clients

Shifting the main business of the rural areas from agriculture to service oriented

No time zone problems, thus ensuring rapid services

Politically more acceptable

Disadvantages of Rural outsourcing:

Lack of availability of financial resources and IT skills

Lesser experience than the giant outsourcing firms

It is without doubt that the trend of outsourcing abroad isn’t
going to disappear anytime soon but looking for virtual team members in
small towns, in the form of rural outsourcing would be a triple
advantage for your firm-good workers, good for small towns and lower
costs.

We all have heard much about the BPO boom in India and its remarkable
benefits that it has served India with. But in recent times, the future
of the industry is predicted to become bleak due to the government’s
imposition of Transfer Pricing Agreement and additionally levying an
increased tax rate at 12%. This is one of the many issues that is seen
challenging the BPO industry’s growth.

What is Transfer Pricing? It
is the price that is being charged by one part of the company for
products and services it provides to another part of the same company,
in order to calculate each division’s finances separately.Its purpose:To
ensure that a fair price is charged, tax authorities make sure that
goods and services are sold at a price the company would seek from an
unrelated third party. The purpose is to make companies reflect the fair
amount of profit and not avoid tax.

What is the fuss about the Agreement?The
BPO companies in India feel that the new Transfer Pricing Agreement is
arbitrary and that the taxes are being too much demanding and
unreasonable. The BPO companies make an argument that until last year
the BPO companies which were operating under the Software Technology
Parks of India, were entitled to full income tax rebate. But now the
companies are worried about this year’s profits fearing that it will be
taxed, proving burdensome for the already burdened industry.

On
the contrary, the income tax officials are keen on this tax as they
prove enough evidences of companies showing deliberate lower profits in
India and then transfer their surpluses in some other company thereby
evading tax payments.

All in all, the government’s legislation
in this order to reduce tax evasions is indeed an ideal step but in
order to have an exact and balanced effect, it would be good enough to
consider all the parties and then come up with a suitable legislation,
which is fair to all the parties.

Shortlist some call centers and compare their services and the price at which they are willing to work for you.

If possible, get a survey done of the call center’s services; this will help you gauge their level of performance.

Ask the call center service provider to provide you with a free
trail project before signing a contract as this shall help them gauge
their efficiency and performance levels.

Check if the call center service providers have good communication skills

Search for a call center service provider which will ensure quality work.

So, if you are a growing company out there and are wishing to
flourish your base, outsourcing seems to be an only helpful solution and
a great help provider. But before you do that, you need to ensure the
enlisted tips are taken care off, for a call center service provider
will either make or break your business, if not picked properly.

Stable democracy, youngest and most educated population, India is all
what can be called, a one stop shop for the offshore call center
services. The developed nations have been looking for a labor which is
huge and educated and English speaking. India, with providing all the
three solutions, has in recent time become the most preferred location
for outsourcing call center services of the international companies.

There
are thus many of call centers in India which have international clients
like American Express, Delta Airlines, etc. These call centers hire the
newly college graduates and train them in terms of making them deliver
solutions in western accent, just so that the person who is seeking a
solution, feels that the solution giver is just the girl/guy next door.

Now
staff in the Indian call center obviously has an Indian name and they
change their names, usually keeping a Christian name. so that the query
holders feel connected to the call center staff.

Why choose India?

The 12 hour time difference between the western countries as and
India has made it possible for India to deliver 24x7x365 days solutions.

When we talk about e
Governance, its main target groups remain the citizens, government and
businesses. Hence what we have is Government to Customer or Citizen
model, Government to Employees, Government to Government and Government
to business.

Advantages of e- Governance:

Helps improve public services and strengthen democratic process

Strengthen support for public policies

Fight corruption and bureaucracy in Government departments

Ensures transparency and accountability in governmental functions

Integrated government service at your fingertips

The access can be made anytime, anywhere

Improves overall productivity of the government

Empowers the citizens, as information is a true knowledge

Advantages aside, what is more important is governance and not the
‘e’. Electronic or technology is only a medium to facilitate better
governance. While recognizing its probable benefits, a fact should be
kept in mind that getting to better governance itself is a problem of
heavy magnitude, one that must be tackled with more than electronics and
computing.

Today, the social media is the trendiest communicational buzz. As a
medium of channel, it has fairly done its job beyond imaginable
expectations by standing in as a means of non-commercial interaction
among individuals. Social media indeed, has become a mainstream
phenomenon within the last few years and is only working hard to also
become now a successful means of commercial interaction.

Over the
past few years, the BPO services have made investments in
customer-oriented business intelligence and deep analytic tools for
their company clients. With the growth of the social or interactive
media, it has become possible to critique anything and everything
possible. When it comes to business, from launching to marketing to
receiving feedbacks from customers, the social media has have been an
immense platform.

Now how BPO services converge with this medium and are useful to both the clients and the consumers?

For
instance, if suppose there is a BPO company and its client as say for
instance is Idea cellular company, then any item, comment posted on the
social media be it in terms of blog, in terms of a comment on facebook,
or as a community, and if at all there are any critical or negative
comments, or posts or tweets then this BPO company will monitor the
content o social media and report it to the company.

What are the advantages?

With
the heavy online traffic, even the companies are gaining an online
presence and since they cannot look after the social media, because of
the already huge workload, transferring this responsibility to a BPO
company helps save their time and moreover when a BPO company
administers the complaints and feedback of the consumers online, it then
with its analytic capabilities, understand the consumer sentiments and
behavior and tell exactly what the problem is to the main service
provider company. Hence like this, it lessens the burden of the service
provider company and through the BPO services, the main service provider
company can exactly get to know what their consumers are thinking and
what they want, thus only helping the companies DELIVER BETTER!

All
in all, this social media monitoring task by BPO service providers are
on an early stage of driving value to the consumer-centric analytics.

Today outsourcing has become the order of the day. More and more
organizations are choosing India as a hub of outsourcing companies for a
number of reasons such as, high presence of young population, cost
effectiveness, increased efficiency, increased productivity, shared
risks, reduced operating costs, increased quality, better services and
more time to focus on core competencies.

Discover how India has become the world’s most preferred location for the software development and software enabled services:

Cost-effective services: India having a large, young, educated
population, more so, high amount of educated technical, makes India a
hub for ITES services. Since the supply is more than demand, enabled
with quality talent, investing outsourcing services in India is
therefore profitable.

Time zone advantages: Further the time zone advantages in India and
between other countries are fairly beneficial for India which allows
companies to have a 24 x 7 x 365 days presence with the help of Indian
BPO firms.

Presence of standard quality operations: The Indian outsourcing
companies operate in high international standards and comply with ISO
and SEI-CMM standards.

Excellent software solutions: The Indian outsourcing companies
include provides services such as e-commerce, e-governance, Business
Process Re-engineering, System Migration, Maintaining Legacy system,
System integration, etc.

Stable government and promising economic growth: India has have
witnessed a stable government with positive IT and economic policies
which has made it possible for such high GDP rates accounting to 8%.

Stable governments with a liberal democracy, open economy, and
benefits mentioned above have truly made India, a global center for BPO
services.

The IT/ITES industry body, NASSCOM, is seen noting its concern about the
negative effect of the continual volatility of the Indian currency.
The apex body said that the currency volatility is all set to hinder the
planning process of the BPO industry.

Apart from the Eurozone
financial crisis and the rupee depreciation, factors like US Subprime
crisis and rising input costs are also seen hindering the growth of the
sector. Though the rupee depreciation has brought in good news for the
exporters and software exporting Indian companies like TCS and Infosys.
Since these are big companies that engage themselves in hedging, it
would be for the smaller IT companies to bear the brunt of the market
situation.

The industry apex body, NASSCOM, warns the companies
of the worst situation that lies ahead of them in terms of huge loss, if
the currency further depreciates by 10%. And the loss is definite
enough for all the companies, however big or small they may be in its
operations.

The volatility in currency poses a major challenge to
the BPO firms since for the offshore work they earn their revenues in
dollars and the expenses have to be met in Indian rupees.

But
since the rupee is falling over the US dollars and the fact that the BPO
industry earns its revenues in US dollars, they simply earn more.
Hence, currency depreciation is as good as it bad for the industry. But
all BPO companies are gearing up against the odd situation, by entering
into hedging, and auto escalation clause. Also there are some
companies who have asked and convinced their clients to bill in rupees
instead of dollars and some others have opted the option of linking the
pricing to the fluctuations in exchange rates.

In a backbreaking
situation for the industry like this, it would be interesting as to how
the Indian BPO industries gear up with different strategies to null the
currency volatility crisis.

The IT BPO sector in India is a sunrise sector which has been
propelling phenomenal growth rates for the Indian economy since past
three decades. In our initial articles we have already mentioned a few
of the factors that make India an attractive destination for the
countries world over to outsource their businesses in India, such as,
cost efficiency, younger talented, technical population, high GDP rate,
open economy, etc.

Now that India has already attracted the
businesses, creating more efficiency out of the given task, would be
more profitable for the industry. It is for this reason that the
industry experts have suggested new business models tap this
opportunity, Hub and Spoke, being one.

What is Hub and Spoke Model?
The Hub and Spoke model or network basically refers to a system of
connections arranged like a chariot wheel, in which all the traffic
moves along the spokes which is connected to the hub at the center.
Thus in the wider role, Hub performs the functions of management
responsibilities of customers, quality risk and performance management,
training and development, manpower management, and regulatory
compliance. In a similar context, the role of Spokes include meeting the
performance expectations of Hub, adding to its manpower needs, local
project management, supporting the Hub on issues of legality and taxes
and operating as an leeway to the delivery center.

Advantages of Hub and Spoke model:
The model is seen to have enabled centralized control in an already
large and scattered organization with respect to skill developments,
resource utilization, enhancing operational efficiency, and helping
enforce uniform/universal standards across all delivery centers. The
model minimizes the risk of delivering from single or few locations,
thus allowing the service provider to make use of the labor from
respective locations it chooses as Spokes.

The model has been
successfully implanted in aviation and manufacturing sectors. Seeing
their surging growth, utilizing the benefits of the model for the Indian
IT BPO industry surely sounds a successful business tactic.

Photographs of actor Ashton Kutcher dressed up as late Steve Jobs
emerged Saturday, giving the world a first glimpse of how Kutcher will
look in the upcoming independent film about the former Apple CEO.TMZ posted the images
taken on a movie set in Los Angeles, showing Kutcher wearing Jobs’s
iconic attire including a black turtleneck, blue jeans and tennis shoes.
Filming for the flick — tentatively titled Jobs: Get Inspired — began in this month.

Producer Mark Hulme recently told tech website Neowin
that the biopic will come out in the last quarter of 2012 and will
focus on “the early years of Apple, its founding and the up and down
years.”
Kutcher, who stars in CBS’s Two and a Half Men, previously played roles on Fox’sThat ’70s Show and films such as The Butterfly Effect, No Strings Attached, Valentine’s Day and Dude, Where’s My Car.

Sometimes — no matter what you do — you just can’t get a girl to like you in the same way you like her. The kid in this video, for better or worse, is finding that out at an early age.
The little boy, our protagonist here, spends a solid two minutes
leaning in for a kiss or cuddle time with his would-be toddler
girlfriend. But the young lady is not having it. She pushes him away.
She turns her back on him. She shoves him to the ground multiple times.
Even his put-both-hands-on-the-ground-and-scoot-around move won’t work.
That move always works!

The cute video has gone viral with more than 200,000 views since it was posted to YouTube on Monday. Its origins are unclear, but the video’s information is all written in Portuguese.
Sometimes, kid, you just gotta cut your losses and move on. But thanks for the laughs.

Could Facebook become the next Dropbox — or a haven for sharing files without regard to copyright?
The social network has revealed to that all Groups
will now offer the ability to send files. This update rolls out to a
small percentage of groups Thursday, and will become available to others
during the following days. If you don’t have the feature already,
Facebook wants you to know you’ll have it “soon.”
Facebook Groups for Schools, launched last month, incorporated the file-sharing feature — but you needed a .edu address to use it.
Users can upload most file types up to 25MB — the same file size
limit as Gmail. The exceptions: music files (sorry, old-school Napster
fans) and executable (.exe) files (sorry, hackers). But e-books, comics,
music videos and other small movies are fair game.
To prevent the spread of malicious, inappropriate or copyrighted
files, “users can report files the same way they can with other content
across the site,” a Facebook spokesperson said. Whether a group that
wants to share such things will willingly turn itself in remains to be
seen.
More than 380 million people use Facebook Groups. Being able to share
files was one of the most common requests from groups users, the
spokesperson said.
This is how the new file sharing feature will look:
In October 2010, Facebook acquired simple file sharing service drop.io.
Unlike Adobe Connect or Dropbox users, drop.io users did not have to
register to use the site. They could simply upload a file, create a
“drop” with links to files and share it with others.
Drop.io also had free conference call service — so perhaps Facebook
can incorporate this technology into its file sharing feature in future.
Do you use Facebook Groups? What do you think about this latest feature? Sound off in the comments. Christina Warren contributed to this report.

You want to digitize a print document? You have Google Drive and an Android device? You are all set!

1- Take a very clear picture of the paper document2- Send it to Google Drive3- (Re)name the uploaded document and check the "transform as a Google document" box. Go!4- Wait for upload and process. Done! :)

One month after its $1 billion acquisition of Instagram, Facebook has added filters to one of its apps.
Users of Facebook’s app for non-smartphones, “Facebook for Every
Phone,” can now tweak their photos with Sepia or Grayscale filters
similar to those Instagram offers.
Instagram had nothing to do with the new feature, a Facebook spokesperson told Inside Facebook. Rather, the apps were developed at an employee hackathon.
The New York TImes reported
in August 2011 that Facebook was developing a set of filters for its
mobile app “with the hopes of drawing off fans of Instagram.”
Given its recent $1 billion acquisition of Instagram,
that is no longer Facebook’s motive. But it could help users of phones
that can’t run the Instagram app understand what the fuss is all about.
The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment on whether it would be expanding the feature to its other apps.